Some 450 of the nation’s fanciest felines will be in San Diego this weekend, joined by a newcomer from the Far East: the Chinese Li Hua cat, a brown tabby so revered in its homeland that owners hold wedding ceremonies for mating pairs.

Pronounced “lee wah,” the cat had never lived outside mainland China until last October, when two of them were brought to the United States after a five-year effort to get the breed recognized here.

One of the cats lives in Palm Springs with two sisters, Joann and Esther White, veteran breeders and handlers. His official name is Lihua China Zhong Guo. They call him China. “That’s the only one of his four names I can pronounce,” Joann White said.

China spends most weekends at cat shows. This Saturday and Sunday it’s the annual fur-fest at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, the largest such event west of the Rockies. While official judges look him over from head to toe, he’ll also be an object of fascination among cat people, who haven’t seen a new breed introduced since the RagaMuffin eight years ago.

Li Huas are mentioned in records dating back to the Shang Dynasty (approximately 1300 BC). They’ve been renowned through the ages as strong, agile rat catchers and are supposedly so trainable they can be taught to fetch things. But they aren’t immediate show stoppers, appearance-wise.

“Quite frankly, the first time I saw one, I thought it looked like a household pet,” said Bob Zenda, a longtime judge from Arizona who regularly works shows in the Far East and was instrumental in bringing the Li Hua here.

Nothing against household pets, but most pedigreed cats — there are 41 breeds recognized now by the Cat Fanciers Association — have a certain precision to them, an air of distinction if not snootiness, apparent even to outsiders.

The Li Hua initially looks like any number of tabbies you’ve seen on someone’s lap, sunning on a porch, slinking around trash cans in an alley.

A closer examination yields certain identifying characteristics: a rich brown coat color, particular black striping on the head, leopard spots on the belly, a black-tipped tail, and black dots at the rear corners of the mouth that make it look like it’s smiling.

See several of the cats together, all with the same markings, and it becomes clear that “wow, this is something different, a unique breed,” Zenda said. And that something different is all-natural, evolved over hundreds of years, instead of being the result of crossbreeding, as some show cats are.

White said there’s been a lot of excitement among cat fans. She and her sister picked up the two Li Huas at the airport in Los Angeles in October — the other one eventually went to a handler in South Dakota — and by the time they made their way back to Palm Springs, some 200 people had sent e-mails, wondering when they could get a gander at the 18-month-old China.